Abscissa’s Page

Just what the internet needs, another random Joe’s worthless opinion on it:

(Disclaimer: I’ve always liked Star Trek, fuck, I even liked the animated series. So it’s not like I’m a trek-hater that, unsurprisingly, hated it.)

Saw the first two scenes. Roughly ten minutes. That’s it. That’s all I could actually take.

First Scene: Worst directing and camera work in movie/film/television history. Seriously. Words like that get tossed around a lot. But I really, truly mean it. In fact, I can actually say that the old Hana Barbara cartoons had better directing without resorting to hyperbole. I can’t believe I can say that, but it’s true.

Even Paul Greengrass (Of The Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum Butchering) knows how to properly frame up a subject. People hate Michael Bay, but he can do it too. Hell, even Uwe Boll can fucking do it. But somehow JJ Abrams can’t. Instead, he sets up the absolute worst shots humanly possible (this, in addition to the same paint-mixer-as-a-tripod-syndrome Greengrass suffers from), does it all deliberately, and still tries to call himself a director. What the hell is going on at Paramount that this guy has managed to secure a job?

Second Scene: BAM! Product placement in the face! In Star Trek. Yes, that’s right. Product placement…in Star Trek. And you thought Minority Report was fiction. Take a good guess what company I’m never buying a phone from…

Icing On The Shit Cake: Granted: I love “Sabotage”. Question: What the fuck is it doing in Star Trek?

Shadow of the Colossus has been said to be the closest a videogame has come to being fine art. I agree in at least one regard - It has the framerate of a Monet.

Sure, it has some of the best graphics ever seen on a PS2. It’s easy to pull that off when you let the framerate hover around 10. I haven’t seen framerates this bad since games were using “It’s 3D!” as a marketing point.

The framerate is so bad it even affects the controls. I’ve played multiplayer action games on a dial-up modem that had less lag. (I’m not kidding. Quake 3 Arena’s networking code was incredible…Even if the rest of the game was shallow as a frat kid.)

But how is the rest of Shadow of the Colossus? I don’t really know. Just running around at the beginning gave me such a headache I haven’t touched the game since.

I’m the kind of person that can manage to find something to complain about with just about anything, no matter how good it is overall. The Jason Bourne movies (below) and Resident Evil 4 are good examples.

Resident Evil 4 is great (”No shit, Nick, everyone knows that!”). But ever since I first got it, there’s been something about the camera and movement (no matter how much better than the previous games) that just felt…off, and even a little motion-sickness inducing (And I’ve never gotten motion-sickness from a game - and I’ve played a lot of FPSes).

Yesterday, I went back to it to see if I wanted to finish it on Gamecube (I haven’t beaten it yet) or trade it in for the Wii version (my decision: trade it). While playing, I finally figured out what made it feel so odd: Leon doesn’t walk straight. If the camera is pointing straight ahead, and you hold “walk forward”, Leon’s direction is a few degrees right of center. My god, that’s awkward. And it’s even more annoying now that I know what’s happening.

“So what? Just compensate by holding slightly left instead of straight up, like any other game.” I would, except you can’t turn by a small enough amount.

I hope the Wii version fixes this, but something tells me no.

UPDATE: Got ahold of the Wii version. Still has the same problem. Summary: On the plus, it’s nice to aim with the IR pointer instead of an Analog stick. On the minus, they didn’t go far enough when updating the controls for Wii (A problem common to a number of Wii games - I’ll elaborate later). Overall “Resident Wiivil 4″ verdict: Too early to tell. Ask me later.

Ahem…Director Paul Greengrass suffers from a little-known disease of which the lone symptom is a chronic inability to distinguish between a tripod and a paint mixer.

Yes, I just saw the new third Jason Bourne movie. Just like the rest of the series, it was great overall. Overall. BUT, just like the second one, the action scenes were the one part that blew. Scratch that, the action scenes were probably just as great as the rest of the movie, except I couldn’t tell because the camera was spinning around so damn much I couldn’t see what the hell was going on. It sure sounded like cool things were happening, though.

Interestingly, the first movie (not counting a version from 1988 that apparently exists - I haven’t seen that one yet) didn’t have that problem. Turns out that was a different director, Doug Liman. For the second movie, Liman stuck to the producing side and handed the director role over to the caffeine junkie known as Paul Greengrass.

If there’s ever another Bourne movie, please, Doug, kick Paul’s ass to the curb and direct it yourself, okay? Better yet, redo the second and third movies yourself (maybe a “Producer’s Cut”). I would really like to finally see what happened during those super-awesome action scenes.

If you’re like me and avoided Zero Mission for fear of either of the following, do yourself a favor and pick it up anyway:

• “It’ll be just like that Ultra-Hand-Holding Metroid Fusion garbage.”
• “It might be nothing more than a ‘Mario All-Stars’-style graphics-swap of the original.”

I recently got talked into trying Zero Mission, beat it, and happily found neither of those to be the case. Zero Mission is the true successor to Super Metroid.